TITLE:
Green Tax Policy, Environmental Decentralization and Energy Consumption: Evidence from China
AUTHORS:
Xiuyue Deng, Hao Huang
KEYWORDS:
Environmental Pollution, Energy Consumption, Energy Efficiency, Green Tax
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.11 No.9,
September
21,
2020
ABSTRACT: China’s huge
energy consumption has caused a series of environmental problems, and taxation
is an effective way of regulating energy use. Green tax policy can be divided
into narrow sense and broad sense according to its circumscription. Studying
the impact of different ranges of green taxation policies on energy consumption
is of great significance for improving taxation policies to reduce energy
consumption. Based on the government’s
responsibility for policy implementation and supervision, it is necessary to
introduce local government environmental decentralization to explore the role
of government actions in it. Taking the panel data of 30 provinces (cities,
districts) in China from 2007 to 2016 as the research sample, using the system
GMM model, empirically analyze the impact of
broad and narrow green taxation and government environmental
decentralization on energy consumption and energy efficiency, the results
shows: 1) The narrow green tax policy can significantly
reduce energy consumption and promote energy efficiency. 2) Broad green
taxation policy can significantly increase energy consumption and reduce energy
efficiency. 3) Whether under the broad or narrow green taxation policy, the increase in environmental
decentralization of local governments will
significantly reduce the amount of energy consumption and improve energy
efficiency.